


My Heart Was Under Lock and Key, Somehow It Got Unhitched

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Temptation I Can't Resist [1]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Cute, F/M, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, Short & Sweet, Sweet, Television Watching, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Ziva watch an old show together. HBO offends Tony's delicate sensibilities. The conversation gets heavy for a second, but then lightens up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Was Under Lock and Key, Somehow It Got Unhitched

**Author's Note:**

> Just a lil' something while I work on something much longer. I don't own NCIS but love it and have since the first episode, even if I had to take my mom to the ER for a popped jaw (don't ask) while it aired... just need to catch up on it. For, like, about two seasons worth.

She snuggled into the crook of his arm on the couch, long legs crossed under her. A light coating of butter gleamed on her fingers in the television’s pale, flickering firelight. “I do not know why this is so important. It is just one show from when you were a little boy. There are hundreds of shows and movies that you love that I have not seen.”

“This is Bewitched, Ziva.” He let his fingers twine in the tousled ponytail draped over his bicep. “Everything I know about romance probably comes from this. Everything I know about cool…” He paused to consider. “Well, my idea of cool is closer to Mad Men, but at least it sort of fits.”

“Mad men? There are insane people in this?”

“Well, yeah, but I mean Madison Avenue.” He grinned, gestured towards the ceiling with his free hand. “Y’know, the advertising giants of the nineteen sixties. Don Draper. Christina Hendricks in a way too tight dress.”

She pinched the little bit of flesh she could access on his hard, muscular flank.

“Ow! Hey…”

“Your mind is wandering.”

“Yeah, I guess it is. But, y’know… Mad Men. Emmy award winning. You’ve got to hear me talking about it with McGeek.”

“I think that McGee finds Game of Thrones much more interesting.”

“Of course he would; he’s an Elf Lord.”

“There are no elves on Game of Thrones.”

He laughed. “You are clueless about the greatest America drama since Toma but are apparently an expert in HBO’s gore-soaked incest festival.” He paused. “Incestival?”

She popped a piece of the Orville Redenbacher’s into her mouth with all too quick fingers and chewed a few second before answering. “I suppose, Tony, that Tim and I are just more interested in history than you are.”

“There are dragons, Ziva. That’s not history. It’s… dragons. And incest.”

“That is really bothering you, is it not?”

“Not as much as you having never seen Bewitched.”

She squirmed, seemed uncomfortable for an instant before it passed. “My childhood was not like yours, Tony.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’re Israeli.” He gestured and held forth, as if addressing a congregation or theatre full of admirers. “It’s Bewitched, Ziva. Darin and Samantha. Endora, Aunt Clara, Uncle Arthur. Larry and Louise Tate, for God’s sake. It’s for the whole world.”

“I don’t mean because I am Israeli, Tony.”

“What do you mean, then?”

She counted on her fingers, slowly and deliberately for his benefit. “I mean that I have not seen my mother in almost a decade, my sister was exploded by a bomb when she was sixteen, my brother—who I killed, don’t forget—was a terrorist and my father was a cold, distant man who raised me to be, as you put it, a ‘ninja-assassin warrior chick.’” She sighed, unsure quite how to continue. The lighthearted banter about one of Tony’s old shows… well… this was not how it was supposed to turn out, right? Kissing would have been a better end, definitely. “My childhood was not like yours in America, but it wasn’t exactly a typical Israeli childhood, either. It was…” she struggled for a word. “I suppose that if you were charitable towards my father you would call it ‘strange.’ Abusive might be another term, if you did not feel such charity.”

“Wow…” He toyed idly with a dark curl, turning it over and over between his index and middle fingers. “That got heavy.”

“Like a lead baboon.”

“I’m glad for one thing, at least.”

“What?”

He kissed the top of her head, sucked in the smells of sandalwood and cinnamon. “You’re my ninja-assassin warrior chick, at least.”

“Yes, sometimes I just wish I could be your something else.”

“How about my witch?”

She raised her eyebrow at him. “Have you gone crazy for Coco Puffs?”

Instead of answering he sang, in a cheesy, affected voice—or maybe that was just Tony’s singing voice—loudly enough that she had to cover her ears. “You witch, you witch, one thing is for sure… that stuff you pitch, just hasn’t got a cure.”

“Gah! If you stop singing I will be your whatever you need me to and watch whatever silly shows and movies you can dig up on DVD.” She nodded like a bobble head with huge, dark eyes. “I can live with anything that is not that racket you were making.”

“Okay, okay.” They settled against one another, again. He pressed the play button and theme soared out of the surround-sound speakers he was so, so proud of. Ziva almost recognized the tune as the same one that he had been butchering only moments before. This, she reflected ruefully, had the makings of a long night.


End file.
